Let battle commence.Edited to add:Two torch patrols tonight and the enemy's capabilities have not been underestimated.Both beer traps have been dug up.One of them moved 30cms and not a drop spilled.Many, many little black slugs were apprehended while climbing out from under the boards.The leopard slugs were patrolling the paths.But incredibly it turns out they are the gardener's friend.They eat other slugs! Who knew?

I had only ever seen his Rotunda Chandelier at the V&A in London before this.

A regular stop off for coffee was either Bluestone Lane Cafe,

or Jack's Wife Freda near our Airbnb apartment in West Village.

It was a very convenient, if pricey location.

Last year we stayed in Brooklyn and had a lengthy commute

for Manhattan sight-seeing.

I was grateful to be able to avoid the subway in the great heat.

We were alternately roasted or frozen on the journeys

that made walking too arduous.

Ten miles was an average daily hike,

not always intentionally!

I was pretty struck by the contrast in fortunes of NY residents

we observed on the streets and in the subway,

especially when we saw women begging (panhandling) with children.

A complex issue.

Manhattan was full of the loud, exuberant, tattoed, opinionated, striving young.

I wondered where all the people my age were.

People who didn't litter their reportage with 'like' and 'literally'.

One very elderly woman in a restroom in the Strand Bookstore

eyed me exhaustedly in the washbasin mirror and said,

'Isn't it horrible out there?

The subway is just dreadful.'

I smiled sympathetically, nodded my agreement,

and we went our separate ways.

We had a rendezvous at a ramen cocktail bar in Harlem to make.

A young person suggested it and took us there.We would never have dreamt of going down into the dingysubterranean bar of our own accord,but it was really good fun and watching the barman constructing the cocktailsin front of us was like a cabaret act.